First of August, Mission Bay

From a window on the bay I watch the sullen afternoon drag dust and drowsy hours down the street. Liveliness is dead in me, stilled and sun-streaked like a moth caught between screen and window. The clock ticks on, without decision.

Then a sailboat turns in the sun, like a tail-less kite in a jade sky, and the sudden whiteness of that wind-filled canvas strikes me with a splash, a rousing shout, like the clean cold shock of plunging headlong into foaming surf.